My Pet Sold Me novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Date One

Lara's POV

At five to eight on Monday morning, Dane Urquhart was sitting in my waiting room.

He had on his black work coat and a clean flannel, and he held his hat in both hands.

Four people and a beagle in a cone were sitting in the other chairs.

It was the same beagle, back to have his stitches out.

Penny stood behind the front desk with her mouth open and a pen frozen over the sign-in sheet.

I came through the back door in my scrubs, and Dane stood up.

Every head in the room turned from him to me and back again.

"Miss Aldrin," he said.

"Mr. Urquhart."

"I'd like to take you to dinner on Friday."

Nobody in the waiting room breathed.

"As what?" I said.

"As a man who wants to take you to dinner.

"There's no bond in it, and no wolves, and no lock.

"You drive yourself and I drive myself, and you can leave at the soup."

"What if I say no?"

"Then I go home, and I ask again in a month."

"And if I say no then?"

"Then I get a dog," he said gravely, "and I ask the dog."

The beagle's owner, an older man in a windbreaker, made a noise and covered it with a cough.

"Say yes, honey," he said. "He brought his hat."

I looked at the hat.

It was crushed out of shape from being held.

"Seven o'clock," I said. "The burger place across from Hennessy's.

"I pick the table.

"I pay for my half.

"And you do not once tell me what's safer."

"Understood."

"Go away now. I have a beagle."

He went.

At the door he looked back, and I looked at the chart in my hands and did not smile until the glass swung shut.

Penny let out a scream into her sleeve.

On Friday I wore the green sweater, and I changed twice, and I told myself it was because the first one had a spot on it.

He was already at the table when I got there, in a booth by the window with a menu he was not reading.

He stood up when I came in, and the whole diner saw him do it.

We ordered burgers and a basket of fries, and he did not once look at the door.

He told me about his grandmother, who had run the pack's books until she was eighty and still wouldn't let him touch the ledger.

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